Intensive Agriculture vs. Invertebrate Biodiversity: A Case Study of Woodland Islets in a Matrix of Arable Land

Abstract

Increasing areas of arable land, which is often heavily managed, negatively affect biological diversity in many ways, decreasing species richness and abundance. There is a substantial social demand for implementing agricultural management practices to preserve biological diversity locally. Here, we present the results of studies on the invertebrate diversity of woodland islets, which are small areas of forests surrounded by arable fields. Studies on invertebrate taxa show high values of diversity indices within such forest remnants, with a predominant presence of hymenopterans, collembolans, beetles, and spiders, which serve many ecosystem services, such as pollination or predation. A low abundance of herbivores and a high abundance of agile predators make such small woods a potential habitat for natural pest enemies. The results indicate a potential role for such woodland islets isolated from each other by a distance of ca. 1 km as an efficient substitute for extensive field management since they allow the maintenance of invertebrate diversity in the agricultural landscape.